Afridi remains a man apart

If batting savagery is the holy grail of cricket, Shahid Afridi is the headline. Even in this brave new world, this Pakistani remains a man apart.
On Afridi-esque days of audacity - given his ability to dismiss a blameless ball over the ropes - one can only look to statistics to even begin to understand what actually passed.
True, his game is not without flaws in technique, as purists define the term.
His preference for the aerial route, for front-foot pulls, short-arm jabs and brutal hoicks over midwicket means that he will rarely go through a sustained patch of form.
But on days when he is Superman on the field, nature of the pitch, the quality of opposition, technique... everything is just incidental.
And temperament? In February this year, after shoving his bat at a spectator in South Africa, he was slapped with a four-ODI ban.
In 2006, he threw up a madcap 'retirement' announcement only to retract it. In 2005, at Faisalabad against England, he received a three-match ban after deliberately scuffing up the pitch.
The same year, he took on captain Younis Khan in Barbados because he didn't want to open. In 2000, he got into trouble with the PCB for entertaining young ladies in his Karachi hotel suite.
And heated exchanges between Afridi and players from the opposition have been commonplace. Afridi travels with controversy in his kitbag.
Because like Peshawar, the city of his descent, Afridi's temperament is rugged and damningly unmindful of convention.
However, that is only half the explanation for his unpredictability. There is something more to his nature, something that flirts with the dangers of international cricket.
Take the Twenty20 international against England at Bristol last year. Coming in on a hat-trick ball, he promptly charged down and sent Stuart Broad to the high heavens, barely failing to clear the ropes.
The whole Afridi story, after all, is about taking risks.
The blade-runner burst off the blocks with a 37-ball century versus Sri Lanka in Nairobi in 1996.
Sixteen then (though a certain Geoffrey Boycott wouldn't entirely agree), the credentials that preceded him were modest, if promising: a leg-spinner who could bat who had progressed from Peshawar to Karachi, from street cricket to the Shadab Cricket Club, from the leading wicket-taker for Karachi U-19 in the National Juniors Cup in 1995-96 to the national team.
No, Afridi's talent is also about the sum of his various essences on the field.
Fingers ever drawn to his floppy hair, he is always in the opposition's face, whether hurling down the fastest 'faster ball' a legspinner ever bowled or taunting batsmen to take on his arm, accounts of which, even if exaggerated, give to him the game's most celebrated handshake.
If that handshake is bone-crunching, then beware, world. The most serious damage Shahid Afridi does could yet be this summer in the Caribbean.